Hasta La Gadget!

I’m sure if I entirely believe any post about the accuracy of sci-fi films that begins with the phrase, “I’m not aware of any intense rivalry between Star Trek and Star Wars fans.” Of course, it’s still morning, so it could be that my sarcasm detector is warming up.

That said, a new blog post over on Shadowlocked claims to lend some fodder for the Star Wars side of the fight over science realism (which, let’s face it, seems to afford itself a lot of liberties based on the whole “galaxy far, far away” thing). The post cites a book from 2002 by astronomer Phil Plait, which examined an explosion from Star Wars alongside one from Star Trek.

According to the book, the re-imagined explosion of the Death Star in the 1997 re-release of A New Hope is actually a bit more accurate than the explodiness (that’s a word, right?) of the Klingon moon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Says Shadowlocked,

Since explosions in space tend toward spherical shape unless impeded, Plait concludes that the blast pattern resulting from the explosion of the Klingon mining operation has no credible reason to resolve into a ring form, even if everyone thinks the effect is far cooler here than in 1997’s revised New Hope.

So, I guess that settles that. Now, does anyone know a good neurologist who wants to tackle Jar Jar Binks?

[Image from Flickr.]

This is still in the unverified reports stage–but, should it indeed come to fruition, it certainly wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. According to The Los Angeles Times, Blockuster recently held a number of meetings with all six major movie studios, to discuss its plans to file for bankruptcy.

The filing is apparently set for the middle of next month. Blockbuster will file Chapter 11, to help shed its $1 billion debt and leases for more than 500 stores–about one-seventh of its total U.S. locations.

Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes reportedly flew out to L.A. from Dallas for the meetings, joined by a number of “restructuring consultants.” They asked the big six–Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Disney, and Warner Bros–for their support (in the form of rentable DVDs).

Blockbuster’s woes, of course, can largely be traced back to increased competition from the likes of Netflix and Redbox, whose new rental models have largely left Blockbuster behind. The company has attempted to reinvent itself by adopting similar methods–DVD mailers, online streaming, and off-site kiosks–while continuing to slip into debt.

Lenovo has shipped 40 of its software engineers to work for Beijing’s eedoo Technology. The team has been tasked to develop and market the “eBox” game console to the Chinese people.

The world’s number 4 leading PC maker has quite the task ahead if it plans to compete against such systems as the Xbox 360 and PS3. Not only that, but China has been notorious for its bootleg market, making the console gaming market a tough niche.

For a while the Chinese-based PC maker has been trying to diversify its sales away for solely personal computers, as Lenovo has tried its hand at smartphones and has plans for a tablet PC. The question is if Lenovo manages to build a competitive console, will they try to expand to the international market.

[via Reuters]

You know how when someone points something out to you, you just can’t stop seeing it? Well, the blogosphere has just done that to me. There are a number of posts floating around various tech blogs suggesting that a new Droid commercial is mocking the Abu Ghraib torture scandal from a few years back–you remember that, right? “The U.S. does not torture,” only, you know, we kind of did…

I haven’t seen the commercial out of the context of the suggestion–and now that it’s planted in my brain, I likely won’t be able to ever see it that way. Now that it’s in the ether, however, the connection is certainly there. Certain parallels seem to exist between the images in the shot and the photos that surfaced of prisoners in compromising positions in the Baghdad prison.

I’m certainly willing to give Verizon, Motorola, et al. the benefit of the doubt here–at least as far as the subject matter. As far as the actual comedic content–well, it’s not torture, but that’s probably the nicest thing I can say about it…

A new patent application from Apple aims to remove yet more componentry from its already minimal devices. The invention combines the orifices for microphone and headphone into one, promising a kind of double-penetration for iPhones.

In this design, the microphone would sit at the bottom of the cavity into which slips the headphone jack, and “is coupled to the body such that the plug aperture and the cavity provide an acoustic path to the microphone.”

Not only does this close off an open hole through which dust and dirt may enter, it could actually be used in conjunction with a normal, hole-using mic to provide noise-cancelation for phone-calls and even provide directional recording via something called “beamforming”.

This obsession with stripped-down hardware will clearly never end. We’re down to one main button and a few dedicated switches on the iPad, along with four holes in the edges. I don’t think Apple will be satisfied until it has printed its multi-touch circuitry directly onto our retinas and fingers.

Audio Jack with Included Microphone [USPTO via New Scientist]

See Also:

• Apple Wises Up, Improves iPhone's Headphone Compatibility …

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